Prior to baseball and softball games, the team equipment must be readily available to the team members and their coaches. Heretofore, it has been common practice to store and transport such team equipment in a canvas bag with all the equipment gathered therein randomly in no particular order. It is usually impossible to determine whether all the necessary team equipment items are present in such bag, both prior to and subsequent to the games without their removal from the bag and making an accounting. Individual items of team equipment can be lost, strayed or stolen at any time, especially after games when players and/or coaches are celebrating victory or commiserating defeat. It is a very difficult task for coaches and batboys to ensure that all items of team equipment are properly gathered and stored in the bag, the bag having very restricted visibility only through its top opening. This is true of bats, balls, gloves, bases, catchers equipment, helmets and the like. Frequently, the bag must be emptied to make the required accounting, both before and after games. The bats are normally thrown into the bag in random fashion and due to their size and number make the accounting even more difficult.
It has been conventional practice prior to a game to dump all of the varied items of team equipment, including the bats, onto the ground adjacent the team dugout where the various items are sorted out and utilized as required. Usually there is no organized pattern for maintaining all of the equipment in any prescribed order, frequently resulting in losses of team equipment due to various reasons. After a game, the assemblying and storing of the equipment is a haphazard affair and sometimes losses of equipment are not detected until the next game.
The subject carrier is intended to prevent such losses. In addition, prior to a game it is not unusual for the playing field to be wet or soggy due to rain requiring the playing field to be shifted and marked off in an adjacent area near the conventional playing surface. Such relocation requires establishing new base lines and base distances to permit playing the game under standardized conditions on essentially dry ground. The present invention is directed toward eliminating the aforesaid difficulties of lining a playing field and preventing team equipment losses.
It is a general object of this invention to provide a novel and improved device for retaining and storing team equipment in a combined multipurpose readily-transportable carrier.
A more specific object of this invention is to provide a novel and improved combined carrier which will facilitate maintaining all of the game equipment for a single team in proper order for easier and quicker location, use and storage by team members, and which will facilitate lining off of the playing field as required prior to games.
Another object of this invention is to provide a combined baseball bat rack and equipment carrier which enable the bats, balls and other equipment to be consistently arranged in an orderly compact unit which can be easily transported on integral wheels and which will permit field lining in an expedient and accurate manner.
Another object of this invention is to provide a combined carrier and storage device for team equipment which is wheeled and which can be used integrally for playing field lining as required, the device having plural compartments and a viewable front side for equipment accounting.
A still further object of this invention is to provide a combined field lining enclosure and an equipment storing enclosure combined into a unitary carrier device having a single set of wheels for easy transport and expedient field lining employing fine particulate material uniformly distributed in linear fashion, the individual twin enclosures being integrally joined for combined use and separable for servicing as required .